World's Smallest Multiplane Transesophageal Transducer Designed for Pediatric Cardiac Patients

The world's smallest transesophageal echocardiography (TEE) transducer has been developed for cardiac imaging of neonatal patients.

As part of the latest Vision release for the Philips Healthcare (Best, The Netherlands) iE33 intelligent echocardiography system, the microTEE transducer provides pediatric cardiologists with a diagnostic tool for imaging the hearts of newborn patients. Philips microTEE was presented in June 2009 at the 20th annual American Society of Echocardiography (ASE) in Washington, DC, USA.

Due to the larger size of previously available pediatric TEE transducers, small infants have been impossible to image during critical cardiac catheterization or surgical procedures. As a result, high-risk procedures have been done routinely on these tiny patients without transesophageal echocardiography images available to the interventionalist or surgeon.

"The microTEE probe is a major advance in our ability to provide intraoperative cardiac imaging in newborn babies and infants,” said Dr. Girish Shirali, M.D., director of pediatric echocardiography at Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC; Columbia, USA) Children's Hospital. "We are delighted with the image quality, and the miniaturization of the probe has already proven invaluable to our pediatric interventionalists in high-risk cath lab procedures. Finally, our smallest and sickest patients can be imaged intra-operatively just like everyone else.”

Building on Philips' existing two-dimensional (2D) technology, the microTEE transducer is approximately one-third the size of previous pediatric TEE transducers, allowing physicians to utilize it for the first time on their tinier patients and provide the images they need during interventional procedures. The new microTEE is also entering trials for adult patients requiring TEE imaging but who have difficulty tolerating standard TEE probes.

"We developed the microTEE in order to help even the smallest patients,” said Anne LeGrand, senior vice president and general manager, ultrasound, for Philips Healthcare.

"MicroTEE is the latest in a series of industry ‘firsts' offered on our iE33 premium cardiovascular platform.”

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